The Clayhanger Trilogy: Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways & These Twain (Complete Edition). Bennett Arnold

“Pitch the bastard awt, neck and crop!”

      Hands clawed at the interrupter and dragged him with extreme violence to the level of the bench, where he muttered like a dying volcano. Angry growls shot up here and there, snappish, menacing, and bestial.

      “It is quite true,” said the leader soothingly, “that our comrades at Trenton have collected forty pounds for us. But forty pounds would scarcely pay for a loaf of bread for one man in every ten on strike.”

      There was more interruption. The dangerous growls continued in running explosions along the benches. The leader, ignoring them, turned to consult with his neighbour, and then faced his audience and called out more loudly—

      “The business of the meeting is at an end.”

      The entire multitude jumped up, and there was stretching of arms and stamping of feet. The men nearest to the door now perceived Edwin and Hilda, who moved backwards as before a flood. Edwin seized Hilda’s arm to hasten her.

      “Lads,” bawled an old man’s voice from near the stage, “Let’s sing ‘Rock of Ages.’”

      A frowning and hirsute fellow near the door, with the veins prominent on his red forehead, shouted hoarsely, “‘Rock of Ages’ be buggered!” and shifting his hands into his pockets he plunged for the street, head foremost and chin sticking out murderously. Edwin and Hilda escaped at speed and recrossed the road. The crowd came surging out of the narrow neck of the building and spread over the pavements like a sinister liquid. But from within the building came the lusty song of “Rock of Ages.”

      “It’s terrible!” Hilda murmured, after a silence. “Just to see them is enough. I shall never forget what you said.”

      “What was that?” he inquired. He knew what it was, but he wished to prolong the taste of her appreciation.

      “That you’ve only got to see the poor things to know they’re in the right! Oh! I’ve lost my handkerchief, unless I’ve left it in your shop. It must have dropped out of my muff.”

      Four.

      The shop was closed. As with his latchkey he opened the private door and then stood on one side for her to precede him into the corridor that led to the back of the shop, he watched the stream of operatives scattering across Duck Bank and descending towards the Square. It was as if he and Hilda, being pursued, were escaping. And as Hilda, stopping an instant on the step, saw what he saw, her face took a troubled expression. They both went in and he shut the door.

      “Turn to the left,” he said, wondering whether the big Columbia machine would be running, for her to see if she chose.

      “Oh! This takes you to the shop, does it? How funny to be behind the counter!”

      He thought she spoke self-consciously, in the way of small talk: which was contrary to her habit.

      “Here’s my handkerchief!” she cried, with pleasure. It was on the counter, a little white wisp in the grey-sheeted gloom. Stifford must have found it on the floor and picked it up.

      The idea flashed through Edwin’s head: “Did she leave her handkerchief on purpose, so that we should have to come back here?”

      The only illumination of the shop was from three or four diamond-shaped holes in the upper part of as many shutters. No object was at first quite distinct. The corners were very dark. All merchandise not in drawers or on shelves was hidden in pale dust cloths. A chair wrong side up was on the fancy-counter, its back hanging over the front of the counter. Hilda had wandered behind the other counter, and Edwin was in the middle of the shop. Her face in the twilight had become more mysterious than ever. He was in a state of emotion, but he did not know to what category the emotion belonged. They were alone. Stifford had gone for the half-holiday. Darius, sickly, would certainly not come near. The printers were working as usual in their place, and the clanking whirr of a treadle-machine overhead agitated the ceiling. But nobody would enter the shop. His excitement increased, but did not define itself. There was a sudden roar in Duck Square, and then cries.

      “What can that be?” Hilda asked, low.

      “Some of the strikers,” he answered, and went through the doors to the letter-hole in the central shutter, lifted the flap, and looked through.

      A struggle was in progress at the entrance to the Duck Inn. One man was apparently drunk; others were jeering on the skirts of the lean crowd.

      “It’s some sort of a fight among them,” said Edwin loudly, so that she could hear in the shop. But at the same instant he felt the wind of the door swinging behind him, and Hilda was silently at his elbow.

      “Let me look,” she said.

      Assuredly her voice was trembling. He moved, as little as possible, and held the flap up for her. She bent and gazed. He could hear various noises in the Square, but she described nothing to him. After a long while she withdrew from the hole.

      “A lot of them have gone into the public-house,” she said. “The others seem to be moving away. There’s a policeman. What a shame,” she burst out passionately, “that they have to drink to forget their trouble!” She made no remark upon the strangeness of starving workmen being able to pay for beer sufficient to intoxicate themselves. Nor did she comment, as a woman, on the misery of the wives and children at home in the slums and the cheap cottage-rows. She merely compassionated the men in that they were driven to brutishness. Her features showed painful pity masking disgust.

      She stepped back into the shop.

      “Do you know,” she began, in a new tone, “you’ve quite altered my notion of poetry—what you said as we were going up to the station.”

      “Really!” He smiled nervously. He was very pleased. He would have been astounded by this speech from her, a professed devotee of poetry, if in those instants the capacity for astonishment had remained to him.

      “Yes,” she said, and continued, frowning and picking at her muff: “But you do alter my notions, I don’t know how it is... So this is your little office!”

      The door of the cubicle was open.

      “Yes, go in and have a look at it.”

      “Shall I?” She went in.

      He followed her.

      And no sooner was she in than she muttered, “I must hurry off now.” Yet a moment before she seemed to have infinite leisure.

      “Shall you be at Brighton long?” he demanded, and scarcely recognised his own accents.

      “Oh! I can’t tell! I’ve no idea. It depends.”

      “How soon shall you be down our way again?”

      She only shook her head.

      “I say—you know—” he protested.

      “Good-bye,” she said, quavering. “Thanks very much.” She held out her hand.

      “But—” He took her hand.

      His suffering was intolerable. It was torture of the most exquisite kind. Her hand pressed his. Something snapped in him. His left hand hovered shaking over her shoulder, and then touched her shoulder, and he could feel her left hand on his arm. The embrace was clumsy in its instinctive and unskilled violence, but its clumsiness was redeemed by all his sincerity and all hers. His eyes were within six inches of her eyes, full of delicious shame, anxiety, and surrender. They kissed... He had amorously kissed a woman. All his past life sank away, and he began a new life on the impetus of that supreme and final emotion. It was an emotion that in its freshness, agitating and divine, could never be renewed. He had felt the virgin answer of her lips on his. She had told him everything, she had yielded up her mystery, in a second of time. Her courage in responding to his caress ravished and amazed him. She was so unaffected, so simple, so heroic. And the cool, delicate purity of those lips! And the faint feminine